Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to Stephenie Meyer.
Remedium
Preface
She'd never given much thought to how she would die. She would never die, though; it was almost like she had known that all along.
Back in a previous life—an easier one, at that—she would have died for him. Everything she did would have been for him. She had lived for him, and when she thought about it, she truly had died for him. She had died everyday for him because it had been the right thing to do, and because she had thought it would all work out eventually.
When she thought about it now, there was nothing right about it. Him, her, the idea of him and her. Maybe he'd known that it wasn't right, but he'd done it, anyway. He had been—since he definitely was not now—a villain like that. And of course, that was fine with her. She was a villainess. It was practically her middle name. They were a team, a pair.
But how was it so easy for her to look so fondly in the face of complete innocence and plain, earthly beauty only to shatter it? To anybody else, it wasn't easy; it wasn't supposed to be easy. Everybody had their deal of difficult times to get through, but maybe she'd had just had too many times like this. Maybe she'd been broken somewhere in the middle of this journey, so these times weren't that difficult anymore. They were only difficult for people who had feelings. She wasn't one of those people.
That made a lot of sense—almost too much sense, really.
Looking down at innocent green eyes filled with tears, but not quite releasing them, he held his breath and prayed for his soul. She would pray for hers, too, but it was impossible to pray for something that didn't exist. It was impossible to hope for nothing. She could give five times as much of herself, but five times zero was still zero.
She wanted to say she was sorry, but sorry was just another one of her phrases. It was so classic that it was almost sickening. She had been sorry for bleeding, sorry for crying, and sorry for living. Sorry hadn't done anything, and it never would. When the weak had nothing good of their own to give, what were they to do?
They were to take.
Sorry had no effect, but she knew something that did.
Her hand traced his cheek, light as a feather. She knew keeping him away from the physical pain wouldn't numb the mental, but she couldn't afford to hurt him any more than she might in this moment.
"It will be as if I'd never existed."